Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2020 17:50:18 +0100 From: Ralf Mardorf <ralf-mardorf@riseup.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Firefox memory usage Message-ID: <20201109175018.2eb98d36@archlinux> In-Reply-To: <0489c069-c4d9-ab63-69fc-dcd0b5be9133@laverenz.de> References: <CA%2ByoEx9rAmDP0xoqqDsn6_a5_anRmf=6Y6nKWCxDaoza1F_o5Q@mail.gmail.com> <CAM8r67ATXU==emMG=C1dQ1tL2%2BfPuO1eyp_2RV%2BCJpd0uK42VA@mail.gmail.com> <20201109052945.6fcfaf70.freebsd@edvax.de> <20201109090703.4642059f@DaemONX> <CAM8r67CAaQZBzdkPSnXHAFpNnrDtAvMPdEnRtVedNyqhgY%2Bf2w@mail.gmail.com> <0489c069-c4d9-ab63-69fc-dcd0b5be9133@laverenz.de>
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On Mon, 9 Nov 2020 15:19:15 +0100, Uwe Laverenz wrote: >Maybe the slowdowns you see on Intel CPUs are due to the many fixes >that became necessary because of the spectre an meltdown side-channel >problems. AFAIK Intel CPUs are affected more than AMD CPUs. I don't think so, more likely X11 and GTK related issues might be culprits. OTOH a lot of issues didn't happen before Meltdown and Spectre _and_ just disabling all mitigations not necessarily brings back old fast paths. Due to the mitigations Linux lost probably one or the other fast path, but it seems not to have that much impact on resources or performance. The mitigations seem to be mostly provided by the kernel, not by the microcode, so it indeed could be different on FreeBSD. However, some Intel and X users experience issues with new Linux kernels, that are seemingly related to the graphics driver. If I'm using a Linux kernel 5+ and launch Firefox, then the graphics does freeze for several seconds and the machine is unresponsive for this seconds. Other experience crashes that force them to reboot. This issue does effect other software, too, but Firefox is most prone to cause this issue on my machione. I stay with Linux 4+ to get rid of this issue. There's still another X related issue common on some Linux machines. Apps tend to crash all the times with `!xcb_xlib_threads_sequence_lost'. Mostly GTK2 apps are affected and often migrating to a GTK3 branch of the same app solves the issue, but sometimes it happens to GTK3 apps, too. Too funny, I planed to completely migrate to FreeBSD to get rid of those new Linux issues, but seemingly it's all the same when using FreeBSD. OTOH I'm not surprised, since when opening a GTK3 app even on the fastest, modern computers, the window shows the GTK widgets first as visible black boxes, it's at least noticeable as a kind of flash. Btw. I migrated from AMD to Linux a while back, since all my machines were AMD and a PITA, at least for pro-audio usage. With my Intel machine I got rid of most, if not all issues, but a while ago upstream step by step does introduce new issues. To some extend it's better when using proprietary software on iPadOS. By paying upstream does remove one bug by another and serious bugs usually don't last for long. Upstream of gratis FLOSS software often tends to put the blame on other and then to close a bug report.
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